Online marketplaces are defined herein as online e-commerce sales (e.g., retail) outlets that act as aggregators where third-party sellers (e.g., retailers) can sell items through branded web portals of the online marketplaces for a fee or a percentage of the sales prices. Generally, an online marketplace manages the customer data, the order process, and the payment transaction process before an order is sent to the third-party seller for fulfillment. Generally an online marketplace is a fixed-price sales channel such as Amazon.com, eBay Stores, Half.com, ABE, Alibris, etc., and generally is not an auction format.
Online marketplaces are typically adapted to accommodate either very small-scale sellers who can manually enter and track very small numbers of items, or very large-scale sellers who form partnerships with selected online marketplaces and build custom computer systems that integrate with those of the online marketplace. Many, many sellers list and sell too many items on online marketplaces to efficiently handle the cumbersome manual entry, tracking, and processing of orders, but list and sell far too few items to afford custom computer integration with the online marketplace. For these many online marketplace sellers, the efficiency or reaching large numbers of customers online is offset by the inefficiency of managing inventory, sales and pricing through the manual user interfaces of online marketplaces.
Moreover, the dynamic nature of pricing is this environment can become very difficult to manage for more than just a few items. Price changes by different sellers in an online marketplace can quickly render a listed price too high to effect any sale at all or so low that the profitability of the sale is less than optimal. Manual tracking of prices listed by different sellers, and updating of one's own prices can be time-consuming for small numbers of listed items and virtually impossible with even a moderate number of listed items.
Accordingly, the present invention provides an online marketplace management system that automates management of inventory, sales, and pricing for a seller in an online marketplace. The present invention includes software and methods that in operation provide a system for managing the sale of, for example, merchandise, through online marketplaces such as Amazon.com, eBay Stores, Half.com, ABE, Alibris, etc. The online marketplace management system allows users to sell large numbers of items (e.g., tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands) through multiple marketplaces simultaneously from a single database.
In one implementation, the online marketplace management system incorporates inventory management tools, which include data-entry tools that can utilize a bar-code scanner, keyboard strokes or file import, automated warehousing and fulfillment tools, including automated location code assignment and processing by sort order, stock-level management tools, and automated inventory upload/download to online marketplaces.
The online marketplace management system also incorporates automated pricing tools, which may include pricing based on competitive market placement (cheapest price, average price of first five cheapest items, average price in class, etc.), regular and automated price updates for all inventory, allowing sellers to maintain competitive pricing automatically, cost of goods and profit indices, allowing sellers to protect margins, and monopoly pricing, allowing sellers to compare pricing between various marketplaces and set prices to highest marketplace price for a set period of time.
The online marketplace management system can further incorporate automated order management tools, including automated order downloads from all marketplaces, automated bulk printing of order packing slips, sortable according to pick patterns, automated email confirmations of orders shipped, automated order status tracking (New, Printed, Shipped), automated batch order cancellation and refund processing, and order lookup and management tools;
Additional objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the detailed description of the preferred embodiment thereof, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.